Hall of Fame: Bruce Krumpholz (CdM)

Richard Dunn

In the fall of 1973, Bruce Krumpholz cracked the starting lineup as

a freshman on the UCLA water polo team, forming a Corona del Mar High

reunion of sorts with his older brother, Kurt, and Garth Bergeson, both

of whom were juniors.

Krumpholz’s mentor and former high school coach, Cliff Hooper, would

drive up to Westwood to see his past pupils compete in the Pac 8

Conference.

“It was fun for me,” Krumpholz said. “To be in the water with Garth

Bergeson and my brother, to have three Corona del Mar people in the

starting lineup, that was fun.”

The good times seemed to be far and few between, however, for

Krumpholz (CdM Class of ‘73) during his outstanding aquatics career.

Seizures and breathing problems forced Krumpholz to retire early,

after two years of water polo and swimming at UCLA.

Further, in the summer of ’72 before Krumpholz’s senior year at CdM,

his father lost a long battle with cancer.

“It’s a humbling experience,” he said, “and that’s probably why the

way I am. For me, the past is the past. I don’t particularly want to live

in the past. It’s gone. It was just a weird time. It was not the greatest

time for me. The things I remember are really not about what I did, but

the relationships I had with players on the team. They helped me through

a not very fun time in my life.”

As a CdM senior, Krumpholz was named the CIF Southern Section

co-Player of the Year in water polo, and, in swimming, captured a CIF

title in the 100-yard breaststroke (1:00.5) and established the fastest

time in the nation that year in the event.

As a sophomore, Krumpholz was a starter on the Sea Kings’ CIF

championship water polo team in the fall of 1970, but, with all his

success in the pool, “it (was) hard to go home and do cartwheels when

your dad’s trying to breathe.”

Hooper, who lived in Laguna Beach, became “a surrogate father” to

Krumpholz, picking him up at his house every morning and taking him to

school.

After Krumpholz lost his father, the family had to sell their house.

In his senior year, they moved to Irvine near the former El Toro Marine

Base, but Hooper continued to pick him up for school every morning.

“(Hooper) would come by at 5:15 a.m. and take me to workout,” said

Krumpholz, the only senior on the water polo team that year.

Krumpholz was the school’s Athlete of the Year in 1973, a year that

included competition from Matt Keough, the former major league pitcher

who led the CdM basketball team to a 26-2 record and was a first-round

draft choice in baseball.

“Bruce Krumpholz had the most athletic body of anyone I’ve coached,”

Hooper said. “His misfortune was that he played on a water polo team (his

senior year) that wasn’t very strong.

“Bruce always made it look so easy. Like in baseball, they’d hit’em

high, but Joe DiMaggio was always there. He was always where the ball

came down. He just floated to it. He seemed to always be there and made

it look so easy. Bruce Krumpholz was like that in water polo.”

Despite his nation-leading time in the breaststroke his senior year,

Krumpholz said he was “more of a butterflier than anything else.” But

breathing problems and subsequent seizures in the pool limited him to

sprinting events.

“There were periods of time when I couldn’t work out,” he said. “I’d

get a kickboard and work on kicking.”

Krumpholz said he had “a lot” of seizures while working out with his

teams at CdM and UCLA.

“It got embarrassing, being in the water and then having to be dragged

out of the water,” said Krumpholz, who also suffered from allergies.

“I had all kinds of crazy stuff going on. When I got to college my

freshman year (my health problems) got real bad, then my sophomore year

was just ridiculous.”

UCLA didn’t want to risk losing Krumpholz permanently while he was

swimming in its pool, and Krumpholz stopped having fun in the water, so

he retired with one of the great “what if” tags on his cap.

In swimming, he was the fastest breaststroker in the country, and in

water polo, his former coach compared him to the Yankee Clipper in terms

of sporting grace. But what if Krumpholz was completely healthy

throughout his aquatics career?

“I didn’t want (the Bruins) to give up on me. It just got real hard,”

he said. “But, at the time, I was starting to figure out that nobody’s

making a living swimming or playing water polo, and back then you were

lucky to get your mother to come to a game.”

Krumpholz started his own business shortly after college, “because I

was sure nobody would hire me,” he quipped.

Krumpholz lasted 18 years and experienced huge successes, and now has

been invited to run another company, which “distributes plastic along the

West Coast.”

Krumpholz, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

lives in a home on the beach in Ventura with his wife, Laura, and two

daughters: Ellie, 12, and Amy, 10.

“I may have taken the long road to get where I am, but it worked out

pretty well,” said Krumpholz, who added that his neighborhood reminds him

of Newport Beach 35 years ago.